• Question: what is your most recent discovery?

    Asked by mattia96 to Chris, Emily, Martin, Natalie, Tamsin on 24 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Chris Cooper

      Chris Cooper answered on 24 Mar 2010:

      Hemoglobin is the red protein in blood that carries oxygen around. I have recently found out that I can add something to hemoglobin to make it less toxic. This means that when your blood cells burst (as in brain bleeds or malaria or septic shock) I may be able to make the effects less bad for the patient.

      Unfortunately I haven’t patented the idea yet so I can’t tell you what it is! One of the few times when science is less open than I would hope. But you did ask for the most recent idea though…

    • Photo: Martin Coath

      Martin Coath answered on 25 Mar 2010:

      Hi there

      The is one discovery I make every day which is:

      “things are always more complicated than they seem”

      It is now 0845 and by 0945 I will have made this discovery again 🙁

      I know that wasn’t what you meant! I have recently submitted a paper – which means I have reached the end of a series of experiments and I am ready to tell the world about it – and this paper deals with one of the ways that we might learn to hear things during the time our brains are developing.

      My work at the moment investigates how patterns of sound that we hear could affect patterns of connections in the brain during the first part of your life when brain connections are being made and broken at a very high rate.

      Noone has really looked at this before so everything I publish is a discovery. This isn’t so unusual, reserch scientist do this all the time – it is their job! 🙂

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